Storyfall - a new IF authoring tool and publishing platform!

[dfabulich (Dan Fabulich)]

Congratulations on developing your IF platform! I wish you the best of luck.

I have a standard piece of advice that I share with developers of new IF authoring systems.

Most people choose an IF platform by playing a great game and saying, “I really like this game, and I would like to make another game just like it. How did the author(s) make it?”

So, when IF platforms successfully take off, they require an admirable story (not just a technology demo) to attract new authors. Historically, the first “admirable” story for each now-successful IF platform was typically either written by the platform authors themselves, or directly funded by them. (Twine’s first admirable story by Anna Anthropy is the only exception I’m aware of.) Admirers don’t seem to directly care about any of the details of the system, except that if it’s too hard for them to learn the system and finish a game, that’s a major factor in achieving true popularity.

I think you’ll either need to write something great or hire a great writer (preferably paid in advance) to launch your platform effectively.

Writing the first good game yourself is also important because there are already competitive choice-based IF platforms out there, including Twine, Ink, Adventuron, and our platform, ChoiceScript.

Your platform is also in competition with authors who just want to write their own platform, like you did. Developing a work of choice-based IF is often a novice programmer’s second program, literally right after “hello world.” It’s one of the recommended projects in JavaScript for Kids for Dummies. (Chapter 16: Choose Your Own Adventure)

All in all, your website looks great, and I believe you can build the community you want to build if you’re willing to put in the work/money required to write a great game.

[Storyfall]

Thank you for your encouragement!

I think you’re exactly right. That’s the journey I went through. I played Choice of Zombies and Zombie Exodus and got hooked. I played many more and then naturally started using ChoiceScript to write my own story.

I’ve been pretty busy with writing the code for Storyfall but it sounds like I need to start switching gears to writing a full-length story of my own.

[Ivan (Ivan Cockrum)]

@Storyfall

I just added a feedback system. Readers can now submit feedback

Nice!

[Lurker (Admiral Null License Plate)]

Nice. In that case, I think one of the biggest steps to getting more people to use your platform will be to come up with some kind of Twine import functionality, or possibly one for another popular story format. Most people really don’t have the time to learn a new IF tool.

[J_J_Guest]

@Draconis

That’s fair! I imagine the number of people who want to convert ChoiceScript code to another language is fairly small

I’ve spent the last few weeks doing just that! I was in the process of rewriting a very old, very large game in ChoiceScript but decided to switch to Ink after seeing the Atrament game engine in action. To get working (though not very elegant) Ink code out of ChoiceScript is a simple matter of making seven or eight find-and-replaces. A clever person could easily write a Python script to do it. But the ChoiceScript version was never completed or released, so there’s no conflict. I have quite a history of rewriting old games in different systems, but I’m probably unusual in this respect. But I generally trade up - swapping a simpler system for one that is more sophisticated or feature-rich.

[Storyfall]

Thanks for looking into it! I’m going to research the topic more, I’ve found conflicting information. Some sources say that even if I indirectly facilitate the sale and don’t directly touch the money (besides the fee) I’m still liable. I’ll try to get a proper answer to this.

[Storyfall]

@Encorm

• Easy story styling – the thing I am very much not proficient in is CSS. Good looking and easily editable templates with built in QoL features (like being able to automatically skip/turn off timed text or other text effects, or dark/light mode switching) that the author doesn’t have to enable manually would be great.

Over the past week I’ve been working on adding theming, and this is in now!

There’s a few default presets you can choose from and then you can go down the rabbit hole of customizing all the individual colors yourself. The theme is reflected in both the WYSIWYG editor and on the game page (and optionally you can turn it off in the editor; and readers can turn it off on the game page).

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

That’s a great feature! And one that I’m not aware of any current major IF system offering. Whether it’s Inform, Dialog, or Ink, if I want to tweak the default color scheme, I have to come up with a bunch of hex codes myself; there’s not a convenient library of presets for me to choose from. I would love to be able to grab a “historical fiction” or “fantasy” or “sci-fi” preset with a single dropdown.

Other IF system devs, take note!

(Now you might say, “wait, Draconis, you are an IF system dev!” This is true. But I’m also partially colorblind so making good color schemes is quite hard for me! If someone with functioning color vision wants to help make a library of good color combinations for Inform/Dialog/Ink, hit me up.)

[Ivan (Ivan Cockrum)]

@Draconis

Other IF system devs, take note!

Yup yup. The Javascript parser I’m building handles light / dark themes because that’s default web behavior now, and by extension other themes can be easily added. I haven’t predefined any others yet but probably will get around to it.

/* -------------------------------------------------- */
/* light theme */
/* -------------------------------------------------- */

html[data-theme="light"] {
  --ajs-background-color: var(--ajs-light-background-color);
  --ajs-body-background-color: #1c1852;
  --ajs-body-color: #111;
  --ajs-border-color: #444;
  --ajs-code-color: #599aff;
  ...

(That’s just a portion of the overall styles, for example.)

[Storyfall]

Thanks! I extended the styling to various modals/dialogues that pop up from the game page, including toggles, buttons, etc. to keep the immersion, and it took a lot of tweaking to get this to look right. Even then I’m sure there’s some edge cases I missed where some button or header ends up being hard to read so I’ll likely end up spending more time optimizing this over the next few days and weeks.

[Dissolved]

@Draconis

I have to come up with a bunch of hex codes myself;

Off-topic, but TADS allows HTML colours to be used instead of hex codes—you still have to use hex codes if you want anything else, though.

@Draconis

I would love to be able to grab a “historical fiction” or “fantasy” or “sci-fi” preset with a single dropdown.

Thinking of colours as associated with genres seems very odd to me?

@Storyfall

The theme is reflected in both the WYSIWYG editor and on the game page (and optionally you can turn it off in the editor; and readers can turn it off on the game page).

Does the theme apply to all passages or can you change the colour scheme on a per-passage basis.

[tvil (Tobias V. I. Langhoff)]

@Dissolved

Thinking of colours as associated with genres seems very odd to me?

It doesn’t just need to be colors, though, it could also be fonts.

[Hidnook]

@Dissolved

Thinking of colours as associated with genres seems very odd to me?

For example, Ryan Veeder’s online wraps for his games.

[Ivan (Ivan Cockrum)]

@Dissolved

@Draconis

I would love to be able to grab a “historical fiction” or “fantasy” or “sci-fi” preset with a single dropdown.

Thinking of colours as associated with genres seems very odd to me?

Not at all. Sci-fi might be silvers and cool blues. Fantasy might be warm browns and golds and greens. Historical fiction - well, first pick your era. It’s pretty common for designers to build color palettes thematically like this. There are plenty of color palette design tools. Adobe’s got one.

[Storyfall]

@Dissolved

@Storyfall

The theme is reflected in both the WYSIWYG editor and on the game page (and optionally you can turn it off in the editor; and readers can turn it off on the game page).

Does the theme apply to all passages or can you change the colour scheme on a per-passage basis.

It’s for all passages/scenes in the story. I hadn’t considered making it per-passage, that seems like it might be disorienting, but I’m not sure. Open to feedback here.

[Dissolved]

@Ivan

Not at all. Sci-fi might be silvers and cool blues. Fantasy might be warm browns and golds and greens. Historical fiction - well, first pick your era. It’s pretty common for designers to build color palettes thematically like this. There are plenty of color palette design tools. Adobe’s got one.

Huh, I suppose I’ve always thought about colour in terms of what it means for the particular story in question, like using different colours to indicate a change in viewpoint character, but perhaps that’s unusual. “This work is this genre so therefore I’m going to apply this theme.” is not a thought particularly likely to strike me.

[Storyfall]

Here’s my weekly dev update that captures most of what I’ve done with Storyfall over the past week, if anyone is curious: Dev Update Nov 11th 2025

[EJoyce (Emery Joyce)]

@Storyfall

It’s for all passages/scenes in the story. I hadn’t considered making it per-passage, that seems like it might be disorienting, but I’m not sure. Open to feedback here.

I’ve got several works that use different color schemes to indicate changes in either POV character or setting. Per passage is probably a little more granular than I’d want, but Twine has the ability to apply tags to passages and then you can apply different stylesheets based on the tag, so ideally I’d want something like that—a way to group passages and say “all of these should be this color scheme and all of those should be that color scheme.”

[Storyfall]

Interesting! Okay I’ll add this to my feature TODO list.

Do you think you’d want to also re-use the same theme in different stories?

[EJoyce (Emery Joyce)]

I personally never have, but other people might want to—someone in the other thread just mentioned having a consistent color scheme for all the games in a series.